Caltech News tagged with "TEDxCaltech"http://www.caltech.edu/news/tag_ids/54/rss.xml
enTEDxCaltech: Advancing Humanoid Robots http://www.caltech.edu/news/tedxcaltech-advancing-humanoid-robots-38101
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Katie Neith</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/atlas1_Home_Page_2-NEWS-WEB.jpeg?itok=7j7JiHW9" alt="" /><div class="field field-name-field-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Rendering of the Government-Furnished Equipment robot being developed for the DARPA Robotics Challenge by Boston Dynamics. </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-credit-sane-label field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Credit: DARPA</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>This week we will be highlighting the student speakers who auditioned and were selected to give five-minute talks about their brain-related research at <a href="http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu/">TEDxCaltech: The Brain</a></em><em>, a special event that will take place on Friday, January 18, in Beckman Auditorium. </em></p><p><em>In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program of local, self-organized events called TEDx. Speakers are asked to give the talk of their lives. Live video coverage of the TEDxCaltech experience will be available during the event at </em><em><a href="https://outlookweb.caltech.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=D3jY9Ui13EyxAUYyOaePpZ8seV0jxs8IsHeQ-wMojG6disjMYAbWmqOPrAPKneHPzR9sHLEcsA8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2ftedxcaltech.caltech.edu%2f">http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu</a></em><em>.</em></p><p>When Matanya Horowitz started his undergraduate work in 2006 at University of Colorado at Boulder, he knew that he wanted to work in robotics—mostly because he was disappointed that technology had not yet made good on his sci-fi–inspired dreams of humanoid robots.</p><p>"The best thing we had at the time was the Roomba, which is a great product, but compared to science fiction it seemed really diminutive," says Horowitz. He therefore decided to major in not just electrical engineering, but also economics, applied math, and computer science. "I thought that the answer to better robots would lie somewhere in the middle of these different subjects, and that maybe each one held a different key," he explains.</p><p>Now a doctoral student at Caltech—he earned his masters in the same four years as his multiple undergrad degrees—Horowitz is putting his range of academic experience to work in the labs of engineers Joel Burdick and John Doyle to help advance robotics and intelligent systems. As a member of the control and dynamical systems group, he is active in several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenges that seek to develop better control mechanisms for robotic arms, as well as develop humanoid robots that can do human-like tasks in dangerous situations, such as disable bombs or enter nuclear power plants during an emergency. </p><p>But beneficial advances in robotics also bring challenges. Inspired as a kid by the robot tales of Isaac Asimov, Horowitz has long been interested in how society might be affected by robots.</p><p>"As I began programming just on my own, I saw how easy it was to create something that at least seemed to act with intelligence," he says. "It was interesting to me that we were so close to humanoid robots and that doing these things was so easy. But we also have all these implications we need to think about."</p><p>Horowitz's TEDx talk will explore some of the challenges of building and controlling something that needs to interact in the physical world. He says he's thrilled to have the opportunity to speak at TEDx, not just for the chance to talk to a general audience about his work, but also to hopefully inspire others by his enthusiasm for the field.</p><p>"Recently, there has been such a monumental shift from what robots were capable of even just five years ago, and people should be really excited about this," says Horowitz. "We've been hearing about robots for 30, 40 years—they've always been 'right around the corner.' But now we can finally point to one and say, 'Here it is, literally coming around a corner.'"</p><p> </p><p> </p></div></div></div>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:23:57 +0000katien38101 at http://www.caltech.eduTEDxCaltech: If You Click a Cookie with a Mousehttp://www.caltech.edu/news/tedxcaltech-if-you-click-cookie-mouse-38089
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Marcus Woo</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/Lu_Joy_Tong_Comp_06-NEWS-WEB.jpg?itok=qlrVVk5u" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>This week we will be highlighting the student speakers who auditioned and were selected to give five-minute talks about their brain-related research at <a href="http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu/">TEDxCaltech: The Brain</a></em><em>, a special event that will take place on Friday, January 18, in Beckman Auditorium. </em></p><p><em>In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program of local, self-organized events called TEDx. Speakers are asked to give the talk of their lives. Live video coverage of the TEDxCaltech experience will be available during the event at </em><em><a href="https://outlookweb.caltech.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=D3jY9Ui13EyxAUYyOaePpZ8seV0jxs8IsHeQ-wMojG6disjMYAbWmqOPrAPKneHPzR9sHLEcsA8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2ftedxcaltech.caltech.edu%2f">http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu</a></em><em>.</em></p><p>When offered spinach or a cookie, how do you decide which to eat? Do you go for the healthy choice or the tasty one? To study the science of decision making, researchers in the lab of Caltech neuroeconomist Antonio Rangel analyze what happens inside people's brains as they choose between various kinds of food. The researchers typically use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the changes in oxygen flow through the brain; these changes serve as proxies for spikes or dips in brain activity. Recently, however, investigators have started using a new technique that may better tease out how you choose between the spinach or the cookie—a decision that's often made in a fraction of a second.</p><p>While fMRI is a powerful method, it can only measure changes in brain activity down to the scale of a second or so. "That's not fast enough because these decisions are made sometimes within half a second," says Caltech senior Joy Lu, who will be talking about her research in Rangel's lab at TEDx Caltech. Instead of using fMRI, Lu—along with postdoctoral scholar Cendri Hutcherson and graduate student Nikki Sullivan—turned to the standard old computer mouse.</p><p>During the experiments—which are preliminary, as the researchers are still conducting and refining them—volunteers rate 250 kinds of food for healthiness and tastiness. The choices range from spinach and cookies to broccoli and chips. Then, the volunteers are given a choice between two of those items, represented by pictures on a computer screen. When they decide which option they want, they click with their mouse. But while they mull over their choices, the paths of their mouse cursor are being tracked—the idea being that the cursor paths may reveal how the volunteers arrive at their final decisions.</p><p>For example, if the subject initially feels obligated to be healthy, the cursor may hover over the spinach a moment before finally settling on the cookie. Or, if the person is immediately drawn to the sweet treat before realizing that health is a better choice, the cursor may hover over the cookie first.</p><p>Lu, Hutcherson, and Sullivan are using computer models to find cursor-path patterns or trends that may offer insight into the factors that influence such decisions. Do the paths differ between those who value health over taste and those who favor taste more?</p><p>Although the researchers are still refining their computer algorithms and continuing their experiments, they have some preliminary results. They found that with many people, for example, the cursor first curves toward one choice before ending up at the other. The time it takes for someone's health consciousness to kick in seems to be longer than the time it takes for people to succumb to cravings for something delicious.</p><p>After graduation, Lu plans to go to graduate school in marketing, where she'll use not only neuroscience techniques but also field studies to investigate consumer behavior. She might even compare the two methods. "Using neuroscience in marketing is a very new thing," she says. "That's what draws me toward it. We can't answer all the questions we want to answer just using field studies. You have to look at what's going on in a person's mind."</p></div></div></div>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:34:52 +0000mwoo38089 at http://www.caltech.eduTEDxCaltech: Surmounting the Blood-Brain Barrierhttp://www.caltech.edu/news/tedxcaltech-surmounting-blood-brain-barrier-38059
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Kimm Fesenmaier</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/TED_Slides_Wiley-Page_4-NEWS-WEB.jpg?itok=mAaEb6Zv" alt="" /><div class="field field-name-field-caption field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Researchers are developing nanoparticles that could carry therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier. </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-credit-sane-label field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Credit: Devin Wiley/Caltech</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">This week we will be highlighting the student speakers who auditioned and were selected to give five-minute talks about their brain-related research at <a href="http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu/">TEDxCaltech: The Brain</a></em><em style="line-height: 1.538em;">, a special event that will take place on Friday, January 18, in Beckman Auditorium. </em></p><p><em>In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program of local, self-organized events called TEDx. Speakers are asked to give the talk of their lives. Live video coverage of the TEDxCaltech experience will be available during the event at </em><em><a href="https://outlookweb.caltech.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=D3jY9Ui13EyxAUYyOaePpZ8seV0jxs8IsHeQ-wMojG6disjMYAbWmqOPrAPKneHPzR9sHLEcsA8.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2ftedxcaltech.caltech.edu%2f">http://tedxcaltech.caltech.edu</a></em><em>.</em></p><div>The brain needs its surroundings to be <em>just</em> right. That is, unlike some internal organs, such as the liver, which can process just about anything that comes its way, the brain needs to be protected and to have a chemical environment with the right balance of proteins, sugars, salts, and other metabolites. </div><p>That fact stood out to Caltech MD/PhD candidate and TEDxCaltech speaker Devin Wiley when he was studying medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "In certain cases, one bacterium detected in the brain can be a medical emergency," he says. "So the microenvironment needs to be highly protected and regulated for the brain to function correctly."</p><p>Fortunately, a semipermeable divide, known as the blood-brain barrier, is very good at maintaining such an environment for the brain. This barricade—made up of tightly packed blood-vessel cells—is effective at precisely controlling which molecules get into and out of the brain. Because the blood-brain barrier regulates the molecular traffic into the brain, it presents a significant challenge for anyone wanting to deliver therapeutics to the brain. </p><p>At Caltech, Wiley has been working with his advisor, <a href="http://www.che.caltech.edu/groups/med/index.html">Mark Davis</a>, the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Professor of Chemical Engineering, to develop a work-around—a way to sneak therapeutics past the barrier and into the brain to potentially treat neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The scientists' strategy is to deliver large-molecule therapeutics (which are being developed by the Davis lab as well as other research groups) tucked inside nanoparticles that have proteins attached to their surface. These proteins will bind specifically to receptors on the blood-brain barrier, allowing the nanoparticles and their therapeutic cargo to be shuttled across the barrier and released into the brain.</p><p>"In essence, this is like a Trojan horse," Wiley explains. "You're tricking the blood-brain barrier into transporting drugs to the brain that normally wouldn't get in."</p><p>During his five-minute TEDxCaltech talk on Friday, January 18, Wiley will describe this approach and his efforts to design nanoparticles that can transport and release therapeutics into the brain.</p><p>For Wiley, the issue of delivering therapeutics to the brain is more than a fascinating research problem. His grandmother recently passed away from Alzheimer's disease, and his wife's grandmother also suffers from the neurodegenerative disorder.</p><p>"This is something that affects a lot of people," Wiley says. "Treatments for cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and infectious diseases are really improving. However, better treatments for brain diseases are not being discovered as quickly. So what are the issues? I want to tell the story of one of them."</p></div></div></div>Sat, 12 Jan 2013 00:03:29 +0000kfesenma38059 at http://www.caltech.edu"X" Marks the Spothttp://www.caltech.edu/news/x-marks-spot-23639
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Allan</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/CT-TEDxCaltech-2013-SPOTLIGHT.jpg?itok=D5pdqyYM" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Mark your calendars: The next TEDxCaltech will take place on Friday, January 18, 2013.</p><p>The daylong event, titled TEDxCaltech: The Brain, will be held at Beckman Auditorium. Speakers, performers, and special guests will share their research, discoveries, and ideas—all having to do with the brain. Keeping with the spirit of the original TED talks, the presenters will each give the "talk of their lifetime" in 15 minutes or less as part of a fast-paced day that promises to be jam-packed with information.</p><p>"Themes of the day will range from how the brain is organized and what we know of its inner workings to how we learn, emote, and dream," says Michael Roukes, the Robert M. Abbey Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering, codirector of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute, and the event's co-organizer. "We'll also look into how brain-machine interfaces are giving new hope to the afflicted and how they might ultimately alter how we evolve as a species."</p><p>In addition to these visionary talks, TEDxCaltech will feature artistic, musical, and comedic interludes, as well as opportunities throughout the day for the audience to mingle.</p><p>More than 1,000 local attendees—scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and civic leaders, along with Caltech faculty, students, alumni, staff, and community members participated in the first TEDxCaltech event in 2011. To date, the talks have received more than 1.6 million hits across all media. </p><p>The inaugural event paid homage to Caltech's own Richard Feynman, a trailblazing researcher and educator, and one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century. The day included presentations on quantum computing and the development of nanodevices, as well as performances by a Tuvan throat singer and an 11-time Grammy Award–winning jazz musician.</p><p>Details for this coming year's event—including the schedule, presenters, and tickets—will be available shortly. For anyone interested in getting involved, TEDxCaltech organizers are looking for volunteers as well as applications from students and postdocs wishing to give a short talk.</p><p>"TEDxCaltech is a fantastic event for campus, and a great way to get involved with the Caltech community. There are many volunteer opportunities available, and we hope that everyone will consider participating," says Mary Sikora, associate director of business operations for the Kavli Nanoscience Institute and the event's co-organizer.</p><p>To find out more about TEDxCaltech: The Brain, visit <a href="http://www.tedxcaltech.com">www.tedxcaltech.com</a>.</p></div></div></div>Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:00:00 +0000lorio23639 at http://www.caltech.eduTEDxCaltech Videos Onlinehttp://www.caltech.edu/news/tedxcaltech-videos-online-1880
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Allison Benter</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/story-image-display-5.jpeg?itok=GDk3oids" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>TEDxCaltech brought together innovators, explorers, teachers, and learners for a day of collaboration, conversation, and celebration. Over 30 talks were presented during the day—ranging from Shuki Bruck's discussion of education motivated by curiosity and natural passion to Pamela Bjorkman's description of an agent her lab is engineering to combat HIV. The TEDxCaltech speakers introduced groundbreaking new ideas, shared inspiring stories, and gave us a glimpse of the technology of the future. Seventeen of the talks can now be viewed at online at <a href="http://tedxcaltech.com/">tedxcaltech.com</a> and <a href="http://youtube.com/caltech">youtube.com/caltech</a>; additional videos will be posted one per day until all are available to the public.</p></div></div></div>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000lorio1880 at http://www.caltech.eduWatch Live Streaming of TEDxCaltechhttp://www.caltech.edu/news/watch-live-streaming-tedxcaltech-1854
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Allison Benter</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/story-image-display-8.jpeg?itok=RJ6MnnaF" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div><p>In recognition of the 50-year anniversaries of Richard Feynman's visionary talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" and the inauguration of his revolutionary "Feynman Lectures on Physics," the Institute is now hosting TEDxCaltech. The event will be streamed online throughout the day at <a href="http://tedxcaltech.com">tedxcaltech.com</a>. Sessions include <a href="http://features.caltech.edu/features/90">Conceptualization and Visualization in Science</a>, <a href="http://features.caltech.edu/features/95">Frontiers of Physics</a>, and <a href="http://features.caltech.edu/features/100">Nanoscience and the Future of Biology</a>.</p></div></div></div></div>Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000lorio1854 at http://www.caltech.eduNanoscience and the Future of Biologyhttp://www.caltech.edu/news/nanoscience-and-future-biology-1852
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Marcus Woo</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/Tedx_session3.jpg?itok=MltxRAUY" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>More than 50 years ago, at a meeting of the American Physical Society hosted by Caltech, Richard Feynman gave a talk called "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." In his visionary speech, Feynman discussed the technological promise of tiny machines as small as a few atoms. This promise has grown into a full-fledged discipline we now know as nanoscience, and it is the subject of TEDxCaltech's last session, "Nanoscience and Future Biology."<br /> </p><p>Mark Davis, a chemical engineer at Caltech, will discuss his efforts to design nanoparticles to battle cancer. After seeing his wife suffer through aggressive chemotherapy in 1995, Davis set out to find a cancer treatment that would avoid the harmful side effects that are often as damaging as the disease itself. Over the last 15 years, Davis and his colleagues have designed nanoparticles—tiny spheres about 30 to 70 nanometers in diameter—that target tumors and deliver cancer-killing agents. Unlike the materials used in traditional therapies that involve tiny molecules, these nanoparticles are too big to penetrate other body tissues, thereby avoiding many harmful side effects. At the same time, they're just the right size to find their way to cancer cells.<br /><br />Recently, Davis and his colleagues have packed double-stranded RNA, a molecule similar to DNA, into nanoparticles. Through a process called RNA interference, for which the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded, the double-stranded RNA is able to silence particular genes and prevent them from functioning. By silencing the specific genes responsible for particular cancers, this technique would be a powerful way to combat cancer at the genetic level—a method that avoids the complications and potential side effects of therapies that focus on individual proteins.<br /><br />The researchers engineered the nanoparticles so that after the particles make their deliveries, they fall apart and leave the body via urine. In the last year, Davis and his team have shown, for the first time, that this technique works in cancer patients. "It's a clear example of nanotechnology enabling new biotechnology for therapeutic use in humans," Davis says. He envisions that cancer treatment in the future will be not only personalized but dynamic. If the cancer mutates, doctors can simply change the genetic target of the nanoparticles accordingly.<br /><br />While the potential of minuscule machines are enormous, individual nanodevices are just the beginning, says Caltech physicist <strong>Michael Roukes</strong>. In his talk, titled "Embracing Biocomplexity: Plenty of Room in the Middle," Roukes will outline the importance of moving up from the scale of individual nanodevices and molecules to groups and large collections of cells. Currently, we only understand biological systems to an approximate degree, he says. We know how cells, molecules, or proteins behave or interact as groups, but we don't know how each molecule contributes to the function of the whole biological system.<br /><br />The goal, he says, is to be able to understand, engineer, and manipulate biological circuits—the complex interactions among genes, proteins, and their larger functions—the same way we can design, build, and control computer circuits. Computer engineers talk about "flops," short for floating-point operations per second, a measure of computing power in terms of individual calculations down to the bit level. Roukes predicts that in 50 years, we will arrive at the same level of mastery with biology, speaking in terms of what he calls "bops," biological operations per second. "This will pave the way for future medicine that's very personal to our genomic uniqueness and our environmental history," he says. "It will allow us to understand current physiological conditions and be able to make very detailed preventative predictions about what's needed in order to keep people in good health."<br /><br />TEDxCaltech happens tomorrow. Visit <a href="http://tedxcaltech.com">http://tedxcaltech.com</a> to watch the talks live.</p></div></div></div>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000lmarkle1852 at http://www.caltech.eduThe Eyepiece of the Beholderhttp://www.caltech.edu/news/eyepiece-beholder-1851
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/Tedx_callahan.jpg?itok=AIlD1Oh4" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Fifty years ago, Richard Feynman famously commented: "There's plenty of room at the bottom," articulating a dream that would one day be called nanotechnology. His audience consisted mainly of engineers and scientists. But, says Caltech materials scientist Dennis Callahan, there's also plenty of room down there for practitioners of the visual arts. </p><p>A third-year graduate student in Professor Harry Atwater's lab, Callahan studies the microstructure of solar cells. His responsibilities include often-laborious electron microscopy—but, for him, that drudgery is the gateway to breathtaking new vistas. Even at the nanoscale, nature makes room for beauty—"much more room than in the macroscopic world," Callahan says. He'll present his findings as proof at Friday's TEDxCaltech conference, including a selection of stunning images.</p><p>How stunning? Good enough to win back-to-back first prizes in Caltech's annual <a href="http://artofscience.caltech.edu">"Art of Science"</a> competition (tagline: "Is Your Research Beautiful? Is Your Art Scientific?"). Callahan's 2010 winner is a four-panel sequence capturing a moment of utter chaos at the microscale level: thin ribbons of gold film peeling away from a polymer substrate. The culprit was thermal stress, but under the scanning electron microscope, the ghostly, translucent filaments writhe and twist like cellophane tape in the hands of an inept poltergeist. The previous year, he won with a transmission electron micrograph of a cluster of impure molybdenum trioxide crystals. The overall impression was strongly reminiscent of a robotic dragonfly caught in an X-ray machine.</p><p>That the microworld might possess its own strange beauty is hardly a new concept; Feynman himself acknowledged it. Chapter II-6 of his classic <em>Lectures on Physics</em> includes a field emission micrograph showing the point of a tungsten needle. Individual atoms, magnified an astonishing <em>two million</em> times, shimmer in concentric clusters, producing what the poet Dorothy Donnelly described as: </p><p> . . . a pattern flowered from a thousand <br /> scintillas of matter impeccably spaced <br /> in kaleidoscope-spoked motifs as baroque <br /> as the snowflakes' spiky shapes, ornate <br /> to the tips of their tines.</p><p>As for the future, Callahan predicts that "we will see exponentially more beautiful images from scientists everywhere." And from mathematicians too, since modern technology has the power to give visibility to things lacking tangible existence. The discipline known as "generative art" uses computers to unearth the beauty hidden deep inside functions and algorithms. Some of Callahan's most haunting works are the abstract "digiscapes" he's simulated from complex data sets, and although their particular allure may differ somewhat from that of Feynman's well-known sketches of the human form <em>en deshabille,</em> they can be just as mesmerizing. </p><p>True, to some staunch right-brainers the electron microscope might come off as geeky, or even cheating—what oil paint was before Leonardo, perhaps, or the airbrush before Vargas. Yet it's proven itself capable of delivering images as sublime as anything produced by the hand of man. Callahan sees <a href="http://ofscienceandart.blogspot.com/">his work</a> almost as an aesthetic imperative. Scientists, he points out, "have access to resources and technologies that very few people in the world have access to, and this gives them unique opportunities to create works of art that no one else can."</p><p>No doubt Feynman himself would agree.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pr-links field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Related Links:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://tedxcaltech.com/" class="pr-link">TEDxCaltech.com</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://features.caltech.edu/features/87" class="pr-link">What is TEDxCaltech?</a></div></div></div>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000katien1851 at http://www.caltech.eduThe Frontiers of Physicshttp://www.caltech.edu/news/frontiers-physics-1847
<div class="field field-name-news-writer field-type-ds field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">News Writer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Marcus Woo</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/Tedx_session2.jpg?itok=2KPn8pLc" alt="" /><div class="field field-name-credit-sane-label field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Credit: Jason Torchinksy</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>If your New Year's resolution is to be more organized and orderly, maybe you should take a cue from the universe. Rocks and gasses pack together into planets, which then orbit spheres of gas we know as stars, which are then organized into majestic galaxies. Galaxies themselves are then grouped together into clusters, forming the structure of the cosmos. Going back in time to the Big Bang, the universe was even more orderly—or in physics parlance, in a state of low entropy—when all matter and energy was squished together into a dense, cosmic soup. </p><p>But why the Big Bang had such low entropy is a big mystery, one with implications as to why the universe is the way it is, why life can exist, and why time moves forward rather than backward. The entropy of the universe is also a favorite topic of <strong>Sean Carroll</strong>, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. Carroll—the author of <em>From Eternity to Here</em>, a popular science book on entropy and the arrow of time—will be talking about these ideas in the second session of the TEDx conference at Caltech. The session, entitled "Frontiers of Physics," will include artists and musicians as well as some of the most accomplished physicists in their fields, continuing the TEDxCaltech theme of Feynman's Vision.<br /><br />He never got a chance to meet Richard Feynman, Carroll says, but he shares the late professor's fascination with the entropy of the universe. In three separate texts, including the <em>Feynman Lectures on Physics</em>, Feynman raises the question as to why the cosmos was so orderly in the beginning. "He thought this was important, that Caltech freshmen should know this," says Carroll, who, incidentally, uses the same desk that Feynman did (there's a sticker underneath that reads "Feynman's Desk").<br /><br />But over the years, Carroll says, research into cosmic entropy declined, as physicists were preoccupied with other cosmological problems, such as inflation theory—the idea that the universe underwent a quick and brief expansion soon after the Big Bang. "My goal is to bring it back to the forefront of consciousness," he says. <br /><br />Other Caltech speakers are <strong>Kip Thorne</strong>, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, and <strong>John Preskill</strong>, the current Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics. Both will give talks entitled "On Feynman . . . ," the exact details of which won't be revealed until January 14, the day of the conference.</p></div></div></div>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000lmarkle1847 at http://www.caltech.eduPrepare Ye the Way of the Droidhttp://www.caltech.edu/news/prepare-ye-way-droid-1845
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-full_grid_9 clearfix ">
<img src="http://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www-prod-storage.cloud.caltech.edu/styles/article_photo/s3/Tedx_Trautman.jpg?itok=TcPf0exO" alt="" /></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Noon: a crowded cafeteria. You drift past the salad bar, glumly eyeing the line at the pizza counter. But what's this rolling toward you? It's a little robot—vaguely reminiscent of the movie 'droid WALL-E—and the two of you are moments from a head-on collision.</p><p>Do you halt in your tracks? Jump back? Veer away? Feint left and dodge right? Perhaps you just tromp right across the motorized monstrosity—your little act of revenge against every insane robot in every B movie you ever watched as a kid.</p><p>These questions aren't merely academic, because the situation isn't at all hypothetical. Over the past several months, a little wheeled gizmo sporting stereo camera "eyes" has occasionally been spied lurking in Caltech's Chandler Dining Hall around lunchtime. Its creator, graduate student in control and dynamical systems Peter Trautman, has been using it to study interactions between humans and machines. His project, to be presented at next week's TEDxCaltech conference, is teaching robots how to behave—and survive—in crowded environments.</p><p>Nor is this just for his own amusement. Robots, he says, won't become common in hospitals, stores, and museums until, like teenaged drivers, they've learned to maneuver safely and quickly through crowds. But how? By sauntering forth in a straight line? That's dangerous, overaggressive—and frankly obnoxious. Taking wide, evasive detours? Too inefficient. Waiting for gaps in traffic? That risks perpetual immobility: what roboticists call the Frozen Robot Problem (FRP).</p><p>Teenagers thronging a mall, rush-hour drivers, skiers on a crowded slope: all exhibit movement in response to the movements of others. It's one thing to observe all this from afar, but the moment a robot sets foot into a crowd, the observer becomes the observed.<br /><br />Modeling these convoluted feedback loops is mathematically intractable; that's why most roboticists to date have relied on either intuition and psychology (what do humans "expect" of our little mechanical mascots?) or artificial intelligence (letting the robot itself discover by trial and error what works and what doesn't).</p><p>Neither of those strategies addresses the Frozen Robot Problem (FRP), says Trautman, cheerfully quoting Caltech Nobelist Richard Feynman: "What I cannot create, I do not understand." A human pedestrian constantly makes small speed and direction adjustments, and any automaton hoping to navigate, say, a mall on Thanksgiving weekend cannot emulate this behavior without first comprehending it. This, in fact, was his breakthrough: the realization that solving the FRP would require not merely implementing cooperative collision avoidance, but also forecasting it in others. Fortunately, although the logic of crowds is complex and largely subconscious, he discovered that he only needed to model a few of its characteristics (intentionality, contact avoidance, and some basic dynamics of the human body), all of which could be measured by filming pedestrians. The result: a probabilistic algorithm that produces natural, brisk motion and also chooses shorter, safer trajectories than most humans do.</p><p>Along the way, he found some surprises. For instance, it turns out that a robot moving with purpose is generally ignored by passersby. But once it pauses, individuals start harassing it; a crowd may gather; and when the machine tries to move again, it can't. "Sometimes," Trautman marvels, "people will even try to force it into a corner."</p><p>In other words, in a schoolyard full of bullies, the robots are having to learn the same lesson we once learned:</p><p>"Head down; avoid eye contact; keep walking."</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pr-links field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Related Links:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://tedxcaltech.com/" class="pr-link">TEDxCaltech.com</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://features.caltech.edu/features/87" class="pr-link">What is TEDxCaltech?</a></div></div></div>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000katien1845 at http://www.caltech.edu